SummaryNon planar acoustic materials may be used in building and environmental acoustics to achieve asignificant absorption at lowfrequencies. Examples of these materials are anechoic wedges or advanced design noise barriers. The shape of these materials is mainly based on empirical knowledge because afi ne numerical modeling (e.g. FEM, BEM)r equires large computational costs. Therefore, the optimisation of the general form and of the material used to realise these absorbing systems is limited. The purpose of this paper is to propose an original alternative to these limitations. The work basis relies on the theory for the acoustics of multi-scale porous materials, and in particular on double porosity materials, which has been initiated by Olnyand Boutin (J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 2003, 114(1)). It is shown in this paper that this theory could be successfully applied to the modeling of non planar sound absorbing materials. Examples are givenfor multi-layer systems involving perforated panels, material samples having an irregular surface and anechoic wedges. The discussion is based on comparisons between analytical simulations and measurements.